


Understanding Alva Keel

by mareen



Category: Miracles (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-03-26
Updated: 2003-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-02 13:58:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mareen/pseuds/mareen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Wait a second. Is he drunk?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Understanding Alva Keel

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Asukasammy, to Cornelia for reading it over first and for watching the Oscars with me, even though we are in different countries, and to Gail for liking this and again for erasing all my commas inside the quotes and all the other things I'll never learn. English language evil!

8.30 a.m., Sunday, and Paul has no idea what he's doing on his way to the office. Evvie called and asked him to come, her voice somewhere between annoyance and alarm. She had added an "There's something wrong with Keel..."

before suddenly her attention got caught by something and she had hung up the phone with an exasperated "You better hurry."

So he has come, with his head full of all the bad things that could possibly have happened to Keel to make Evvie sound like that, but nothing has prepared him for the roaring of loud pop music through the office door. Which is just *wrong*.

From his first visit on, the office had looked and felt like a library. A dirty, disordered library with a leaking roof. But still a library.

Once Paul accidentally dropped one of Keel's books. It hit the floor with a bang and Paul mischievously caught himself half-expecting a priest librarian to jump up from behind one of the bookshelves, with his face turned into an expression of disapproval and making a long "Shhh" sound. The office sometimes feels like being back at Catholic school again, with Keel as head librarian.

It is just not a place for loud talking, or loud laughing, or loud...anything, other than Keel's frenzied voice whenever he finds some new wonder to agitate about.

So pop music at Sodalitas Quaerito is a miracle worth examining in itself.

Evelyn is at the table, drinking coffee, when he enters. There's a newspaper in front of her and she's reading it with a look of deep effort on her face, as if she has to force herself to shut out the sounds around her. The music is of course even louder here but only now Paul realises that it is coming from Alva's

private office and that he's actually singing along, with a deep, very bad singing voice and not at all in tune with the female singer. "I will looooove agaiiiiin..."

"Evvie?" She's obviously not hearing him over the noise, so he tries again, louder this time and while walking towards her. "Evvie!"

Startled, she looks up and immediately seems to let go of a sigh of relief. "Paul! Thank God!" She gets up from the chair and walks over to him.

"What is going on here?" He's still kind of amused. This is funny somehow. Really funny, and he is grinning. "It's as if the end of the world is coming! I mean...the music...and Alva. Together."

"This," Evvie tells him, "is Miss Lara Fabian. She's doing pop and dance music as you can hear."

In the office, Alva is singing, "Though my heart is breaking..."

"Alva obviously does, too," Paul answers with a laugh, but turns serious suddenly when he realises something. "Wait a second. Is he drunk?"

"As drunk as you can get. At least I think so, since he won't let me in."

Without thinking about it, Paul starts walking towards the office, but turns, before he reaches the door. Inside, the song ends, and then suddenly starts right from the beginning.

"A neverending loop?" Now there is something shocking.

"It's been going on like that since I first tried talking to him," Evvie sighs. "But I have no idea how long he has been in the office on his own."

"Has he not talked to you at all?" Worried, Paul takes another step towards the door.

Evvie shakes her head. She looks worried, too, now, but it only shows in her eyes. "I tried a few times, but nothing except for `Bugger off`! So I thought that maybe he'll be more open with you... Well, as open as Alva gets. - I'm worried, Paul. This just isn't like him. He does have a drink now and then, but not like this."

Hesitantly, Paul takes another step to the door. "Why do you think he's going to talk to me if he didn't talk to you?"

"Believe me, Paul, if he'll talk to anyone, it'll be you." She smiles.

After making a little "If you think so"-shrug, Paul is pondering for another moment, then he walks over to the coffee machine, gets a mug, pours coffee, ignores milk and sugar and walks back to Alva's office. Knocking twice, he enters without waiting for an answer and is immediately greeted by Alva's loud, slurred, "I told ya, I..."

His and Paul's eyes meet, before he suddenly avoids the gaze and instead stares at the bottle of scotch in his hand. "Ge`out."

It feels a bit bizarre to see Alva like this. On the floor, his back against the large bookcase at the far end of the room, his legs pulled up to his body, the eyes glassy and his dark hair untidy. But the most surreal thing to Paul is strangely that Alva is not wearing any shoes and that his socks are black with a red stripe at the toes, making them look like kid's socks. For a moment, he can't take his eyes off that red and the moving of Alva's feet. Or the small plastic penguin sitting between them on the ground.

"I said ge` out, Paul." His voice is hardly audible over the loud music this time, but to Paul it's like a wake up call. Searching the room for a moment he spots a new looking stereo at the window, walks over and turns off the music. Lara Fabian stops right in the middle of "agaaaain" and Paul makes a sigh of relief.

"I had no idea you liked that kind of music."

"I don't," Alva slurs back at him. "Came with th` stereo. I needed somethin' loud."

Paul laughs softly, and then offers the mug. "Drink it. It's coffee."

Alva looks up at him, pulls the half empty bottle of scotch to his mouth and takes a long, deep sip without taking his eyes off Paul's and without even blinking.

"Well," Paul answers. He sits down in front of Alva, crosses his legs and puts the mug besides his feet. "Do you want to tell me what's going on?"

Alva is just rolling the bottle back and forth between his hands without acknowledging him. He looks terrible. His eyes are not just glassy from the alcohol, they look seriously terrified. The hands are shaky. Not the whole time, but sometimes there is this slight shudder going through him and it makes him grab the bottle just a bit stronger every few moments, as if he is using the pressing of the glass to keep himself together.

"Keel, what is going on with you?" Paul bends forward and puts his fingers slightly on Alva's hand. He is shaken off roughly and the bottle goes back up. At the last moment, Paul grabs Alva's arm and stops him from drinking.

"We`re worried, Evvie and me. Please...Keel..."

It takes some real effort, but finally Paul manages to get the bottle out of his hand, and he puts it way behind his own back, out of Alva's reach, whose hands are shaking for real now, uncontrolled. He looks seriously angry.

"Fuck you," he spits harshly, and it is something Paul never thought he'd ever hear out of Keel's mouth. The words actually make him shrink back slightly.

Grabbing the bookcase, Alva pulls himself up into a standing position. He is swaying and looks sick, but trudges forward to his desk anyway to open one of the drawers. His hand vanishes down into it and comes back out with a new bottle of scotch. Saluting Paul, he opens it and brings it up to his mouth, but Paul is suddenly there and grabs the bottom.

"Keel..." he starts, but Alva just grabs the bottle with an angry "Give me that!" and pulls it back hard to himself. Too hard for someone as drunk as him, obviously, because he loses his balance and trips. Slides off at the corner of the desk and is falling backwards, taking Paul down with him, who is still holding on to the scotch. He ends up on his butt with a hissed curse, while Paul actually can watch the desk coming nearer without being able to do anything about it. With a low scream of pain his brow hits the wooden corner and he only manages to let go of the scotch and catch himself at the last moment before he bumps down on the ground with his face first.

The pain strucks him like lightning and makes shut his eyes. There's this ringing in his head, and the blood, rushing in his ears. From very far away he can hear Alva's frightened voice, calling out his name and then there are his hands, turning him around and on his back.

"Paul. I'm sorry, Paul. - Paul?" And he doesn't sound at all drunk suddenly, just terribly terrified. "Are you okay?"

"I'm okay," he whispers. "Just a second."

There doesn't seem to be blood on his face, just a big bump forming on his forehead. Which isn't new at all. A bit startled, he realises that he is giggling, because, hell, if he keeps it on like that with the head injuries, he'll die of an aneurysm before long.

"Should I call Ev'lyn?" Keel sounds nervous and it makes perfect sense, since most of the head injuries are the fault of SQ anyway.

Again, Paul giggles, but it turns into a hiss of pain. "No...it's okay. Just do me a favour, Keel?" he says with a wince. "Have the coffee...please?"

When he is capable of sitting up again, Alva is already back against the bookcase, the mug in his hand, sipping slowly, with his eyes down between his feet and staring at the little penguin. Moving as slow as possible, Paul crawls towards him and sits opposite him again with his legs crossed.

"I'm sorry," Alva whispers. He can't even meet Paul's eyes. "I didn't..."

But Paul just shrugs it off. Instead, he stretches out his hand and takes the penguin, all the time aware of Alva's eyes following his every move.

It's an old thing made of hard plastic and looking a bit 1950s or 1960s, back when children's toys like these had been made with a lot of care and detail. It still looks nice, but by now, its formerly white chest turned into a dirty grey and the black colour at the back has started to peel off. It looks like something that has been touched, played with, hundreds of times.

"Is this yours?" Paul says softly. "Is this somehow responsible for..." He shrugs at the bottle, lying forgotten besides the desk now.

Alva stretches out his hand, and once he has the penguin back, his fingers close around the toy and make a hard fist. He pulls it back to his lap as if to keep it safe.

"My mother`s," he whispers.

Paul blinks.

"I gave it to her...I was five." He is leaning back heavily against the shelf and takes another small sip of the coffee. For a moment they don't talk, they just sit there together in silence.

There is hardly anything Paul knows about Alva's parents. There have been hints here and there about his childhood being not especially good, his father being a doctor. And of course, there was the story about the birds. But nothing that would explain where this anger comes from, and Paul wonders suddenly why Keel has two bottles of scotch in his office.

"I bought them, Paul," Keel says, as if he'd read his mind. But maybe Paul has just asked the question loud. "Today."

He takes another hard look at Alva's face. There's not just anger there. There's fear, too. Why did he never realize that before?

"Is it the anniversary of her death? Is this...?" He lets the question just hang there in the air. But Alva shakes his head. Again, he is checking out the penguin. He seems to admire it even, looking at it from all its sides, turning it around, moving his thumb over its head, as if caressing it.

"It just was there," he breaths, and his tone is so low, Paul hardly understands him. "I brought the stereo," he acknowledges with a short nod, "because I thought you would like some music..."

It's the second time that Paul blinks. It's a new stereo. He not only *brought* it, he *bought* it for the office.

"...and it was sitting on my desk. Just like that." He closes his fist around the penguin again and presses it together until his knuckles shine out white. "I haven't seen this for a good 30 years."

"Maybe your father..."

Alva's laugh is shallow and angry. "No, Paul, no... Not my father. Not my father..." He looks tired. Incredibly tired. His head falls back and hits the bookcase. If it hurt, he ignores it and just closes his eyes. Shutting the world out.

Paul's head is pounding, the bump at his brow is unpleasantly stretching the skin and burning like fire and what he really wants is take an aspirin, lie down on his bed at home and never get up again. Instead, he moves over and sits besides Alva, voluntarily making their arms touch to offer some silent comfort.

"Do you think it's a sign?" Keel is whispering. If Paul wouldn't know better, he'd never even guessed that he was stark drunk only moments ago. He sounds sober and dead serious, with only a slight slurring here and there. And then there is the tiredness emanating from his body now, as if all the strength has left his body from one moment to the next. "Remember? The veil is getting thinner... Maybe she's..."

"I remember... But if it is a sign, Alva... it could be bad or good...And I don't know what it is...I'm sorry." His voice is low now. Sad.

Alva swallows hard, still without opening his eyes. "If you should see her... her ghost...," he adds hesitantly. "...don't tell me when it is bad."

For a moment, Paul touches the hand holding the penguin. "Whatever you want," he answers softly. He leans back and closes his eyes, too, thinking that Alva will change his mind about this once he is truly sober. But for now...

"Thank you, Paul." It's just a whisper, hardly audible, before Alva's breathing starts to turn slow and even, as if he is falling asleep.

Trying to make himself comfortable, Paul settles against the bookcase to watch over him.

**Author's Note:**

> The story was written for Jenna's Fan Fiction Challenge from March 20th 2003:
> 
> \- All three main characters are involved.
> 
> \- 1-7 printed pages.
> 
> \- Paul must get injured somehow.
> 
> \- There must be mention of a penguin
> 
> \- Somebody (not ness. one of the main characters) must get dead drunk and start singing "I Will Love Again".
> 
> \- There must be some element of the supernatural - ghosts, or whatever else you come up with.
> 
> \- Alva must trip and fall.


End file.
